Kingdom Cottage

Summertime, and living is easy—especially at the cottage. Swimming. Boating. Fishing. Picnics. Sunsets. Perfect. Depending on where you live you might call your getaway by a different name—camp, cabin or lake. But no matter what you call it, there is a shadow side to cottage life that is best done on rainy days: repairs.

When you have a cottage on an island you learn quickly never to call an expert to fix something you might be able to fix yourself. By the time an experienced tradesperson steps off a boat, you are already a couple of hundred dollars poorer. Owning a cottage on an island turns ordinary people into Macgyver-like characters, willing to rig up solutions to any problem with duct tape, dental floss and chicken wire. After all, to quote the great 
Canadian philosopher Red Green: “If the women don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.”

During my teenage years I spent a lot of time on an island, under the family cottage playing “Mr. Fix-it” with my Uncle Jack. It was under that property that I learned everything from basic plumbing and electrical, to how to fix a sinking building with a well-placed telepost. What I discovered, much to my naive teenage mind, was that summer after summer my Uncle Jack didn’t actually need me under the cottage at all. Sure, it helped to have an extra set of hands around on a work project. What I figured out was that my Uncle Jack wanted to teach me the things that he had learned. Always the educator and principal, my uncle saw an opportunity to pass on his wisdom, while watching me grow with skills and practices needed for a full and abundant life.

In a similar way, following the risen Christ and discovering an answer to questions like “Who am I?” and “Who is Jesus?” and “Who am I in Jesus?” means enrolling in the school of Jesus we call the church. As so many return to the classroom this fall, we are reminded that as Christ followers we are always enrolled in the school of Jesus.

Of course, in the Reformed tradition we place a high value on the sovereignty of God. To say it directly, God is in charge. No committee meetings, no public opinion polls, no worries about re-election. God acts. From Creation through the Fall to Redemption, we acknowledge God at work in the world, bringing this cosmological experiment to a proper and joyful consummation in God’s own time.

The soteriological puzzle includes the curiosity that what God could accomplish by His own sovereign power, God chooses to partner instead with fragile, fallible human creatures. Strange. Sounds like a risky plan to me. Like an uncle making repairs under the family cottage, God could get the job done quickly without any help, but God chooses to engage another partner in order to impart knowledge and wisdom through the experience of co-creating. Again, a risky plan unless, of course, God simply delights in this relationship with humankind. A risky plan unless God as covenant maker and covenant keeper continues to reach out to humanity through sheer grace. A risky plan unless God is motivated by the desire to include humanity within the revelation of God’s own experience of mutual, self-giving love found in Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Like an uncle reaching out to a nephew struggling to make sense of the world, God reaches out to humanity and desires to have us pattern our lives on His unforced rhythms of grace. God meets us in our brokenness, accepting us just as we are while having no intention of leaving us the way He found us. Discovering who and whose we are as human creatures means that before we know it, we are enrolled in the school of Jesus we call the church, clunking around in dark corners and learning how to mend creation.

Missional leadership today takes seriously the need for us to claim our identity as disciples or active learners, not simply consumers of religion. There is no outsourcing of baptismal vows to paid clergy in the church that God is creating. Our core identity as students enrolled in the school of Jesus we call the church, means that every aspect of our lives is governed by our relationship with the Headmaster Christ. This is not simply about belief. It is much deeper than that. Anyone can say they believe in God. Big deal. Even the devil believes in God. The real question is, do we trust in God? Do we turn our whole lives over, daily, to God in joyful obedience to God’s will as revealed in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit? It sounds a little bit like, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Enrollment in the school of Jesus requires not only belief in God but trust in God to direct and provide for us as we practice our resurrection faith.

The Bible teaches us that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself and not counting our sins against us. Good news, indeed! God has a renovation project on the go here on earth. Through empty cradle, cross and grave we are part of the family and there is a role for us to play in restoring what is broken by sin. What a blessing it is in mission communities from coast to coast to get under the kingdom cottage with God and discover what He has to teach us! I can’t wait to get going, can you?